Geoponĭci
(
γεωπονικοί). The ancient writers on agriculture; for
instance (among the Greeks), the philosopher Democritus, and in later times, Xenophon, in his
Oeconomicus. No other Greek works of the kind have come down to us, except the
collection called
Geoponica. This consists of twenty books, and contains
extracts from writers of the most widely distant periods. The compiler was a Bithynian,
Cassianus Bassus, who lived about the middle of the tenth century A.D., and undertook the work
at the suggestion of the emperor Constantine VII. He based it upon a collection of extracts
made by a certain Vindanius Anatolius. Agriculture was held in high esteem by the Romans, and
the subject was in consequence a favourite one with their men of letters. A number of their
works on it have come down to us: the
Res Rustica of the elder Cato , a similar
work by the encyclopaedic scholar, Marcus Terentius Varro, the
Georgica of
Vergil; and after Christ the writings of Columella, Gargilius Martialis, and Palladius.
The
Georgica of Vergil arè in verse; as is one book of Columella.
See
Beckh, De Geoponicorum Codicibus Manuscriptis (1886); and the
work by Gemoll
(1887). See Scriptores Rei Rusticae.